Bitcoin Bridges Could Adopt Mandatory Withdrawal Delays

Sergio Lerner, co-founder of RootstockLabs, suggests that Bitcoin bridges adopt mandatory withdrawal delays to prevent bridge bugs from causing total losses. This proposal comes after an incident where nearly 4,000 BTC was withdrawn from Liquid Network's federation wallet through an unauthorized peg-out.

Lerner points out that immediate settlement can turn a single validation error into a loss before bridge operators have time to respond. A time-delay lock could give bridge operators several hours to identify and stop unauthorized withdrawals.

Rootstock already uses a delay mechanism for BTC withdrawals, which waits 4,000 blocks or about 36 hours before signing a peg-out. This system relies on specialized hardware security modules called PowHSMs, which independently verify that the required period has elapsed before signing a transaction.